Case studies

Sometimes a project can just be too innovative in order to seek traditional financing. This is when crowdfunding (CF) can fill the gap, as the V3PO campaign proved.

V3PO is a project for Vegetative propagation of plants in orbit initiated by three students of the Agricultural and Scientific School in Ravensburg, Germany. The team obtained NASA’s commitment to bring the experiment to the International Space Station (ISS) if V3PO would bear mission’s significant costs.

How to raise €300.000 in 4 days for an innovative project? Let us tell you about the Peerby project and you will see how.

Peerby is a Dutch sharing platform which allows people to borrow items from their neighbors. At the beginning, the idea received a lot of exposure and the platform grew more than 500% for two years in a row.

KissKissBankBank, the French crowdfunding platform, is one of the world’s leading platforms dedicated to creativity and innovation. It was one the first CF platforms created in France. Namely, the crisis of 2008 made finance dramatically less accessible, especially for creative industries. As a result KissKissBankBank was founded in 2010.

Even though investments in innovation and research is perceived as highly risky, they can project major financial and social returns. A Dutch crowdfunding (CF) platform, Oneplanetcrowd, which aims to finance sustainable organisations and initiatives in order to positively impact people and planet, realised this.

There is a widespread perception that early stage and innovative projects are too risky to invest in. Crowdfunding can be a solution to fill this gap and it can play an important role in supporting projects for research and innovation.

Crowdfunding is often used for that kind of innovation that changes communities and empowers them in every sense: social innovation. The Apadrinaunolivo.org association used crowdfunding to help them build an olive oil factory in the rural area of Oliete, Spain. They had 95% of all funds but they wanted to launch a campaign in order to raise awareness and create solidarity with local farmers. Finally, they managed to crowdsource 14 715 EUR.

Certainly, crowdfunding might seem demanding especially in terms of communication, but that should not keep innovators and researchers from using it to find money for their projects which essentially bring innovation and development to our communities.

One of researchers who has not shied away from using crowdfunding for research is Professor Dave Goulson’s who needed funds in order to screen a range of bee-friendly plants from UK garden centers in order to identify which ones present a class of insecticide called neonicotinoids.

Crowdfunding can help start businesses in one of two ways: they can help finalise a product ready to sell on the market, or they can help fund a business. In this case study we look at Vox Pop, a company that was successfully funded through equity crowdfunding, a form of crowdfunding where investors get a share of the business.

When crowdfunding for financing the development of innovative products it is often used to achieve two things: First, it helps a company reach that critical phase of development, often the phase that seismically shifts the innovation from an “idea” to a final product; Second, crowdfunding is used to assess the market potential of the product. The logic is: if many people invest in it, they must want to buy it! Foodsniffer focused on directing its crowdfunding campaign to reach a final prototype stage, and managed assess the market potential of its product.

Ocean Cleanup project campaign exceeded its goal by over 150 000 $ attracting 38 000 people from over 160 countries with the average donation of 57 $. Originally from Delft in the Netherlands, the Ocean Cleanup Project is aiming to develop the world’s first feasible method to rid oceans of plastic, and crowdfunding is helping to make it possible.

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